A JULY TO REMEMBER

July 2019

 After two years of basically being a hermit inside of my home, I felt well enough to attend our family reunion. In fact the last time I went anywhere was to our 2017 reunion. We have them every two years. I have a large family. My mom, 8 siblings (plus their spouses), 26 nephews and nieces, too many kids of those nephews and nieces to count. It’s a 3 day event. Usually in one of the many canyons we have here.  Anyway, I digress. 

We get name tags and everything. It felt so good to get out among the masses. We arrived just in time for lunch.  Afterwards there were games, hiking and just talking. 

Here I am explaining to some of my nieces the joys of chemo. I kind of get a kick out of this photo because of the way they all have their arms folded. 

There also was a surprise wedding. One of my nephews married his long time love.  My brother officiated. I was so glad that we decided to go. By the way, it’s not easy getting a wheelchair down a narrow dirt and rock path. But it only took three men to do it. Hehe. 

Of course after that day it took about a week to recover. I also had another round of chemo on the Tuesday after the weekend. 

Eight days later, July 26th, I woke up in the middle of the night with cold sweats. I had never heard of them. Apparently a lot of chemo patients get them. They can be caused by a variety of reasons. They are often associated with your body’s “fight or flight” response. They prevent oxygen or blood from circulating throughout your body. 

I also was disoriented. Scared the crap out of both me and Brent. Time to head to the Emergency Room at the hospital the cancer clinic is in. They ran tests. One thing they found was I was in a hypoglycemic episode. I think my blood glucose was 36. No bueno!! They admitted me to the cancer floor. I was released two days later. 

Oh, but no. That couldn’t be the end of all the fun. The day after I was released I woke up dizzy. I took my morning pills, two of which are my anti rejection and anti seizure drugs, and promptly threw them up. I was nauseated all day. Even my Zofran didn’t help. That night I tried to eat and threw up again. Wasn’t able to take those two drugs yet again. Brent called the on call cancer doctor, who told us to come to the clinic the next morning if I wasn’t feeling better. (The cancer clinic is open every day because patients need different infusions daily). 

The next morning I woke up with extreme dizziness. I actually closed my eyes to make it stop. We went to the clinic. The moment they saw me, they knew I was super sick. I couldn’t even move by myself. I asked them for tea to help my stomach. They called in the attending physician, who looked into my eyes, and said, “you have nystagmus in your right eye”. Ummm, what the heck is that. The main symptom is rapid eye movement that cannot be controlled. Usually the movement is side to side. It can also be up and down or circular. The movement can vary between slow and fast. It can be in one eye or both. It can also be called “dancing eye”. Apparently your eyes are dancing to their own tune. Lol. 

I was once again admitted to the hospital. We joke about my two hospitals being our “timeshares”. They tell me they are going to have an MRI done. According to the report of my admission, it says they are going to do the MRI with and without contrast plus a MRA of the brain and neck.  Had to look that one up. It is magnetic resonance angiography. It is used to see images of the arteries to evaluate them for things such as stenosis, occlusions, aneurysms, or other abnormalities. It’s a good thing I print out and go over everything they have done, because I had no clue they did this test. 

Lets talk about me getting said procedures. Being a smaller hospital, on Sunday the techs that run these tests are on an “on call” basis. As they are transporting me to the cancer floor they tell me they are already there doing a procedure so I am next up. Sweet. We get all checked in. We wait. We know that MRI’s can take up to an hour to do so it’s no big deal.  We continue to wait. I finally send Brent home to be able to shower and bring me up my own blanket and jammies. 

The nurse comes in. I ask her what in the hell is taking so long. She doesn’t know. Goes out. Finally she comes back and informs me that, THE TECH HAS GONE HOME!!!!!!!!  Say What!!!!! Oh dear, the wrath of Dazee comes out. I must have said a whole paragraph of swear words. I know, this is shocking to a lot of you, but I was a pirate in a past life. 

Three (3) hours after being admitted they finally come get me. The aide that wheels me down knows how mad I am. It’s the talk of the whole floor. I tell him I’m not going to talk to the tech, because it will be a blood bath. When I get there, she does the whole “how are you”. I lay there with my mouth closed. The aide finally says “she’s not going to talk to you”. Said tech goes into cover her butt mode. “I didn’t know I had another procedure. It wasn’t in my queue”. Uh huh, I believe every word spouting from your mouth, NOT!

When I’m finally wheeled back to my room Brent has just arrived back. Needless to say, I was livid. Which made him more livid than me. Apparently the head nurse, the director, the nurse in the clinic, and the tech all had to write a report of what happened. 

My daughter and her kids came to see me. I had to ask for an eye mask (you know, the kind you put on to sleep) so I didn’t have to keep my eye closed. It made me cheer up. 

Ordered this purple eyepatch while I was in the hospital. It was delivered when I got home. Thank goodness for Prime. I do look like a fashionable pirate. Arg. 

And you thought all the fun was going to somehow end. Think again.